Because with alarming accuracy
she’ d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of — this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt —
I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.
Where you've fallen, you will stay.
In the whole universe this one
and only place is the sole place
which you have made your very own.
The country runs away from you.
House, mill, poplar — every thing
is struggling with you here, as if
in nothingness mutating.
But now it's you who won't give up.
Did we fleece you? You've grown rich.
Did we blind you? You watch us still.
You bear witness without speech.
To say how much I've missed you, I offer this,
at most mist, at least assorted letters, lists,
numbers I insist tell stories. I kissed you
last, Dad, in the casket in which you passed on,
to some next place, but last listened for your voice
last night, these long years after, will listen next
when next oppressed by blue-gray, as I am now,
as I, thus lost, am always by your absence.
Night is a cistern. Owls sing. Refugees tread meadow roads
with the loud rustling of endless grief.
Who are you, walking in this worried crowd.
And who will you become, who will you be
when day returns, and ordinary greetings circle round.
The world has certified itself rid of
all but the argument: to eradicate or not
the small stock of variola frozen,
quarantined — a dormancy it has
refused, just once, for a woman behind a sterile
lens, her glass slide a clearest, most
becoming pane. How could it resist slipping
away with her, that discrete first pock?
She visits still too much, dressed in aromas
of fir needles, mango, mold: I still get lost
knowing she’ s close, me not getting younger
or more conscious. Sometimes I fantasticate
I’ m broad awake: her witchy presence waits
for me to jump into her arms, but then she’ s just
an incoherent ache in sleep’ s freaked scenes.
I feel her frosty nitrogenous hands and wrists
vaporing nooses around my head and feet
and genitals, conjuring my drab hair
into a party bowl of oiled, desirable locks.
August long ago, the summer Lemnian
(not like the deeds of those who killed their men),
the self a glowing bead, like Hephaestus falling
daylong out of heaven in the old story,
the island's interior a forge, a glory hole,
the odor of wild thyme borne offshore steadily,
the Aegean Sea purple, wine-dark, without epithet;
and as I walked on the beach, my mother not long dead,
the perfect crystal of my self-regard
so lately flawed, and landscape made to echo
my own low cry in the island's empty places,
They were nearing the end of their story.
The fire was dying, like the fire in the story.
Each page turned was torn and fed
to flames, until word by word the book
burned down to an unmade bed of ash.
Wet kindling from an orchard of wooden spoons,
snow stewing, same old wind on the Gramophone,
same old wounds. Turn up the blue dial
under the kettle until darkness boils
with fables, and mirrors defrost to the quick
before fogging with steam, and dreams
rattle their armor of stovepipes and ladles.
Catalpas blooming up and down Catalpa Street, car alarms blooming
up and down Waveland Avenue — an instant of nature without the narrative.
O face-in-your-morning-juice, swimmer-in-an-old-wool-suit,
we sit side by side on the steps smoking the same cigarette,
watching children who live alone, women married to the wrong men.
Over the border the barrier winds,
devouring orchards of various kinds.
Cursed be he that taketh away
the landmark of his neighbor.
And all the people shall say, Amen.
The road was blocked in a battle of wills —
as the lame and sightless trudged through the hills.
Cursed be he that maketh the blind
to go astray in the way.
And all the people shall say, Amen.
